A More Perfect Bread

The miracle of the Eucharist is precisely that the bread remains, in a very real way, bread after the consecration.  It looks like bread.  It tastes like bread.  When you eat it, it will affect your body physiologically just as bread does.  The consecration is not alchemy, whereby one object is transformed into something entirely different.  The bread is still bread.

Yet it is more than bread – or more precisely, it is more perfectly bread, because now it is the Body of Christ.  This bread fulfills the destiny of bread in nourishing the whole man: body and soul.  This bread helps us to see all bread, and indeed all of creation, with new eyes, because this bread is no longer oriented towards earth but towards God. 

This is a subtle miracle, yet it is precisely its subtlety that gives it power.  It is by no means flashy.  It does not come accompanied with lightning bolts and thunder.  It is not magic.  God does not violate the form or function of the bread to achieve His purposes.  He allows the bread to retain its integrity as bread.  He does not force His way into the bread, but permeates it.  He seeps into its pores.  The bread becomes Christ's Body, but the reverse is also true: Christ becomes bread, so that bread might be perfected through Him. 

This is the transformation God wants to effect in us.  God does not want to make us into something we are not.  God wants to perfect who we are.  Be suspicious of flashy conversions, of conversions that demand that we renounce legitimate interests and legitimate joys.  And rest assured that almost all of our interests, all of our joys, all the quirks of our personalities, all the things that make us uniquely ourselves can be put to God’s service.  Are we witty and funny?  Laughter gives joy to God.  Are we serious and somber?  Somberness reminds us that this life’s pleasures are not all there is to human existence.  Are we argumentative and combative?  Use it to argue for the truth and to stand up for justice.  Are we introverted?  We remind others of the need for solitude and silence.  Are we extroverted?  We remind others of the need for community and fellowship.  It is true that God loves us as we are - but He also wants to perfect who we are.  In our conversion we remain the same, yet entirely different.

When God converts our hearts, all of our interests, all of our activities, will have a new orientation, a new purpose.  If we are artists we will still produce art, but our art will be elevated because it will be created out of an awareness that beauty is meant to glorify God.  If we are cooks we will still cook, but our food will have a higher purpose, because it will be given out of a desire to nurture for God’s creation.  If we are teachers we will still teach, but our teaching will reflect an understanding that all true wisdom comes from the Spirit of God.  Our words and actions may sound and look the same as they always did, but there will be a new, a deeper meaning to all we say and do.  The fulfillment of meaning.  

Our God is not a pushy, shovy God.  He will not push us out of the way to make room for Himself.  I think too often we are afraid of letting God enter our lives because we are afraid of this.  We see God as competition, like the loud bossy person in the room who demands silence and refuses to let anyone else talk.  So we shut Him out.  But God does not want us to be silent while He speaks: He wants to speak with us and in us and through us.  He does not want us to be still while He acts: He wants to act through our actions.  He wants to permeate our lives and perfect all that we say and do and are.  He wants us to unite our actions and ourselves with Him.